


129 Days

by Morty_Writes



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Fluff and Angst, One Shot, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 04:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20002165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morty_Writes/pseuds/Morty_Writes
Summary: As a way of dealing with his terminal diagnosis, Okita takes up poetry and decides to write a poem a day to capture the fleeting moments of his daily life.





	129 Days

**Author's Note:**

> This one shot takes place after Okita's good ending and serves as my interpretation of the events after the game.  
> The poem is supposed to imitate a 7-5-7 haiku. I even read some haikus by Masaoka Shiki, at least the ones that were translated to English, to see how a haiku is supposed to be written. He was born pretty much in the same decade when the real Shinsengumi were still active.

Until now, Souji had never really considered himself to be particularly romantic or capable of writing anything compelling. He used to be the sword of the Shinsengumi, a ruthless warrior… His duty, first and foremost before Kondou, was the only thing that mattered. Souji would taint his hands with blood again and again, all in the name of the shogunate. He had seen death and the pain it sowed; he had seen excruciating pain and agony in the people’s eyes right before the last breath would escape their lungs; he had seen it all.  
Living in seclusion, with someone he loved the most by his side, made Souji think a lot about the nature of death. He started feeling as if time was slowly melting away and started keeping track of it. With each passing day, he was closer to his demise, the illness slowly eating his body away. Drinking from the Water of Life never cured him – and they both knew it.

It was spring. Rapeseed blossomed. The colours popped, a beautiful sight. Souji spent some of his free time outside in the nature, while Chizuru stayed at home, cooking dinner. Looking at the fluffy white clouds passing by made him feel melancholic and, in a way, like an ephemeral ghost who was soon to join them. He was thinking too much about what dying would be like, imagining himself to be floating in a transient fog, all alone… The thought that he would be alone in death, leaving Chizuru behind and never ever seeing her again, was too painful to think. This, in turn, made Souji a little bit too clingy when they spent the nights together. 

Th unspoken words spilled into a sentence, and so a poem was born. He kept reciting them on his way home, hoping that they wouldn't be forgotten. 

“Yellow flowers…” he whispered to himself.

When Souji finally came back home, he asked for something to write on, without explaining for what purpose exactly. Chizuru looked at him, puzzled, but didn’t say anything – seeing him so agitated about anything at all made her happy, especially considering how unstable the illness was. Souji had never been the same after learning about the diagnosis. Despite the shortened lifespan, he had a lot of time on his hands and struggled to find fulfillment in other things in life aside from swinging a sword.  
“Just please, be careful,” she smiled. 

Later that evening he suffered from a severe coughing fit, which in turn only made him more determined to finish what he had started. 

Souji had never thought of what he would leave behind, besides a trail of corpses long enough to connect Kyoto and Edo, after dying. This had never occurred to him back when he was working for the Shinsengumi simply because human life seemed too insignificant and fragile to preserve. Meeting Chizuru and choosing to stay by her side made things different: they no longer participated in battles and stopped playing the political game… But, most importantly, he started to see himself as human, not a weapon of war. Sometimes, while watching Chizuru sleep quietly, Souji would wonder whether there was a chance to save this idyllic happiness. They discussed having children together, someone who would resemble them both and pass the legacy on. As the time went on, however, he felt less enthusiastic about the idea. Perhaps Chizuru would love to be a mother... No, deep down he knew that it would be a difficult path to endure, with a father that most likely wouldn't even survive to see the child. In a way, Souji used writing as a more exotic way of experiencing the joy of parenthood. 

The next day he left to watch the local lake. Tall dark trees reflected at its surface and the clear sky painted the water blue. He sat there, trying to come up with three verses to describe his impressions. 

“The sun rays shine bright.  
The nature’s in its full bloom.  
My time’s running short.”

He would repeat this process almost every day throughout the summer, trying to come up with a new location to visit. This became considerably more difficult as the illness progressed, leaving him weak and bedridden most of the time. Covered with sticky cold sweat, Souji would at times feel that even his mind was slipping away, showing him a mixture of flashbacks and things that didn't exist. Yet, Souji was determined to finish writing, and his tired body endured extreme stress as a result. Once, he left to watch the sunset from a nearby hill; he kept imagining the purple and orange bleeding into each other, and how beautiful it would be. He started coughing on his way up, feeling slightly dizzy, and had to have some rest. It took so long to recover that the pucture he imagined disappeared, shifting to dark blue. At times Chizuru would try and make him stay, still a firm believer that laying in bed would somehow help. Souji never fully disclosed what he did exactly out there in the woods. It was amusing that he managed to conceal his creative efforts at all, especially since they lived under the same roof and were close otherwise.

There was something meditative and cathartic about writing poetry, as if Souji was writing a long and complex manuscript confessing all his sins, not haikus. It helped him recollect his thoughts and somehow made the idea of a sudden death, though still painful, not as unbearable. Life was but a series of changing cycles after all.

Around September he would not leave the house at all. Chizuru would take care for him and watch him, spending sleepless nights trying to help. At times she would accidentally fall asleep due to the exhaustion and he would stay up instead when the episodes seemed to get tamer. Souji would stroke her head and hold her small delicate hands in his. They both knew they loved one another – but moments like this made it seem like there was a new, previously unattainable level of love and respect two people could have for each other.

“I’m so happy and thankful, Chizuru…” Souji murmured, his voice breathy and quiet. Sometimes she would wake up and ask him to get rest, smiling right before dozing off again.

It had always been this way. At his worst, he would feel as if he was taking something important away from her, even after the many talks and discussions they had. Souji thought that he, a broken and sick ronin, was a burden. How could such a beautiful young woman settle for a murderer who knew nothing aside from war? He owed her everything – his life, his entire purpose. Souji wanted to write a poem for each day of the year – presumably, his last year – to capture every fading moment. Some poems mentioned Chizuru or were even directly dedicated to her. 

At some point, she left to seek a doctor’s help who stayed in a village nearby. Chizuru left with a heavy heart, her eyes filled with tears – as if she knew it was their last goodbye. 

Souji sighed at his 129 poems, all kept in a sizeable pile of old paper, that he managed to write throughout the course of six months – not even a half of what he wanted. Souji kept it beside him during those sick days, with some black paper and ink just in case a new idea comes up. He wanted to write a goodbye letter, too. His hands were shaking, and all he managed to write was a plea to read the poems and a laconic explanation of his initial plan. 

Later Souji just laid there, looking at the ceiling and sweating excessively, not being able to even think of anything in particular. It was raining outside heavily, with heavy drops drumming at the cabin’s roof as they fell. Nothing could be seen behind the window, only darkness. He thought of dying in her arms, with an image of Chizuru being the last one – but his last wish was not to be granted. Souji couldn’t even pretend to be with her, and this realization horrified him. 

“Chizuru…” he kept calling out her name, as if she would appear. “P-please, help me…”

He panicked. His heart was racing, as if in pursuit to cheat death and win the race against time. He cried, though tears were rare and dried quickly. His entire life flashed right before his eyes: the dojo, Kondou, the towers of disfigured corpses he left behind. Meeting Chizuru, falling ill with tuberculosis and coughing out blood, becoming useless as a ronin. Leaving to Edo, finding the meaning of his life and love and fighting Kaoru to protect what was important to him. Lastly, he saw this year, those moments of peace he carefully collected into 129 poems, each containing a small piece of himself.

Then came acceptance, and Souji couldn’t struggle anymore, drained of any willpower to continue. There was no need to try anymore.

He died at four in the morning.


End file.
